Land water storage area 15%??

Discussion in 'Planting, growing, nurturing Plants' started by digging, Mar 29, 2007.

  1. digging

    digging Junior Member

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    Greetings!

    I was watching Bill on 'Youtube' and I heard him mention having 15% water in your system. The question I have is that total surface area or does that include swales and ditching? Also is it based on rain volumes??

    Thank-you!

    Digging
     
  2. Tezza

    Tezza Junior Member

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    I think it meens 15% total water,(as far as practical) it isnt bad to have less i suppose, Swales and other collecting areas are usually only viable when its raining.

    Of course some areas dont have/need water as its a cactus garden :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

    Or maybe 90% if your growing rice 8) 8) 8) 8) 8)


    Tezza
     
  3. digging

    digging Junior Member

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    So if you had a few ponds around the area that would total %15 surface
    land that should provide the water needs of a standard type mixed farm?

    Digging
     
  4. Jez

    Jez Junior Member

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    Yep, 10-15% total surface area digging - so your property can be better disaster proofed, plus have the beneficial microclimates water provides, and of course, aquatic systems.

    Check out Bill's Tagari design plan (Click To View) for a nice example of water storage and flow across the landscape from the man himself.
     
  5. digging

    digging Junior Member

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    Just one more question!

    My husband was asking about how deep of ponds, what kind of volume of water are we looking for?

    Dig
     
  6. Tezza

    Tezza Junior Member

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    gday diggings yet again...

    How deep a pond should be, is a bit like asking how many worms you got living underground..


    Dunno Dunno Dunno Duno.......


    At a wild guess Id say any depth up to say a foot in depth could begin to help create the micro climate your looking for...

    I use ponds in my garden of 24X19 metres and have 750 litres of pond water in 2 ponds and a few more bath tub troughs that have water in.

    God knows what that sort of percentage is but ,well its a start,having shadey areas nearby your water can change the whole aspect,what you have in your water is important as to what is outside your water.....

    dont get hung up on the exact water percentage..i been doing this for 7 years, in THIS garden, and heck ive only had water in a ponds situation for 18 months....

    Its been a case of first get the plantings in ,any buildings,a bit of shade created,having water in an open aspect is inviting high evaporation especially here in west oz....

    Benifits of water in my garden include water sounds caused by pump running,Free water to birds,it encourages frogs and other benificial insects in to the area,and food for frogs...


    Tezza

    Admitedly its my recent garden
     
  7. SueinWA

    SueinWA Junior Member

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    If you're planning on growing creatures in your pond (yabbies, fish, etc), you'll need to cater to their depth requirements. In hot weather, fish will usually stay deeper where the water is cooler.

    I understand that the deeper the water, the less the temperature fluctuations you'll have, esp if it's shaded (even partly).

    You do the best you can with what you've got.

    Sue
     
  8. Jez

    Jez Junior Member

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    Yep, good point to add Sue - and if you don't have room for a reasonably large surface area (which brings greater dissolved oxygen [DO] levels), you need to choose species that can cope with low DO, or to add oxygen via a fountain, waterfall or bubbler.
     
  9. janahn

    janahn Junior Member

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    ???? 15%

    one must consider the rainfall first. Second, it may be illegal to store 15%
    of your surface with water. Not possible or practical in dryland region. Would work in the tropics. Scale is also a consideration. Also if you have limited land and need stored water for stock/domestic, one big dam saves on evaporation. 15% may take too much water out of the system for deep long term storage for stock/domestic. A big dam needs a big catchment area.

    Leo Mahon Permaculture Design Institute
     
  10. digging

    digging Junior Member

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    I'm still a bit confused about the %? If I have a large shallow pond then it could dry out even though it was 15% of land area? So perhaps volume of water is more important?

    Digging
     
  11. 9anda1f

    9anda1f Administrator Staff Member

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    What I heard...

    From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7g2mmqqEn08 "The Permaculture Concept" - Part 2

    "...in the ___lands, we try to make ponds and lakes 15% of the total..."

    He was speaking as he was filling a small balcony pond for aquaculture. I can't quite catch what the "___"lands are? The quote is from within the first 40 seconds of this part of the series, if you'd like to listen for yourselves.

    It sounds like in general, possibly in some specific area, that he likes to strive for 15% of the surface area to be made up of ponds and/or lakes. I would take this as a rough rule-of-thumb and be based on the average area, given draw-down in the summer and higher waterlines during the rainy season. His figure of 15% may be somewhat based on rainfall patterns for the area he's speaking of.

    For Seattle, I would imagine that the 15% figure could be significantly less! :lol:

    If you watch the video, what do YOU hear?

    9anda1f
     
  12. gardenlen

    gardenlen Group for banned users

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    still no real answer here on what is meant by % be it 15 or 50 or 5?

    i have been lurking on this thread with some interest.

    so if i had 70 acres then 15% of that so me being no mathemetician calculates that as 10 acres fo the total.

    so now land mass isn't measured in dual dimensions it is in single dimension sq/meters so but a good dam is measured in two dimensional form to give a carrying capacity of megalitres or part there of and the need is determined on what you are wanting to do with your land hey?

    ie.,. graze some cattle for food whatever and i think the calculation is you need something like say 60,000 litres per beast per annum give or take now then you need to factor in not only real time average rainfall (almost impossible task these days) and whether you need enough water to get through 10 very bad rainfall years.

    then there is the: how good is the dam, some hold very good water some dry out depends on lots of things realy. so in some areas people may need to carry infinately more water than someone in a better area.

    so a dam needs not only surface size but depth, and if one wants to run home aquaculture as well as stock etc.,. etc.,. then that needs to be factored in hey?

    so i can't see how one dimension gets calculated into a % figure that needs to be in two dimensional form.

    we had a .25 megalitre dam, not big enough for sustainbable aquaculture (i mean to get any worth while food from), and if we ran cattle not big enouhg in the rugh times for that and that is without using that water on gardens or trees etc.,. that's roughtly a 1/4 acre dam.

    for us a 1 megalitre dam would have been sustainable.

    so the 15% may be a too simple broad statement?

    len
     
  13. Jez

    Jez Junior Member

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    15% is a design tip, not really intended as a hard and fast 'rule.'

    IMO it's intended to get new designers thinking about how much water they'll need (based on their intentions for overall land productivity and the methods by which they plan to achieve that productivity), designing around the microclimates bodies of water can help provide, using aquaculture (probably the most commonly underutilised design feature), and disaster proofing.

    Also, I feel it's worth adding: if we think of the Zones 0-5 design scenario, if Zones 0-4 take up say 4 acres of a 100 acre property, while the other 96 acres is relatively untouched native vegetation land which needs little or no regeneration and is planned to be a Zone 5 area (unmanaged 'wild' area), then we're talking about 15% of 4 acres - not 100 acres (of course, some of the other 96 acres may indeed be catchment area for the 4 acres...but you don't need to actively manage it to be utilising it for catchment).

    There's a heap of different dam types which you can utilise in design...saddle, check, keypoint, ridge and gabion silt collecting dams...not all of them have to be full all the time...they just have to help you maximise the benefit of the water which your land receives.

    What level of slope, climate considerations, existing water infrastructure (town water or not), available finance, soil type, and your productivity intentions for the land, are all factors in whether or not it is feasible and practical to devote 15% of your land to water storage.

    It's an ideal designing recommendation. A person's job as the designer of a specific site is just to take 15% into consideration viewed through the context of what design will ultimately fit their specific site best...not produce a failure of a design because they followed 'the rules' badly then devoted 15% of their land area to shallow ponds in an arid area with no water beyond what you can catch.

    Use the ideal recommendation, then design based on the site, the needs of yourself or the owner, and common sense as to what will work best. :)
     

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